Translated material
"Your floor is on your feet !!!"
On December 28, 2020, a colleague wrote "Luda, your floor is on your feet !!!". A year has passed, and I have not yet extinguished the fire. Fines, endless reports, requests to the authorities unanswered, disputes with the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Ministry, the election campaign of the husband-deputy, who were made by a “member of the family of the enemy of the people”, blocked account in the bank and my nerves are flying into the furnace. 365 days I am a foreign agent - “one of the best people of the country”, “NATO Spy”, “covering the protest activity”, “journalist with a quality sign”, “accomplice of Uncle Sam” and “traitor of the homeland”.
New Year's Eve 2021 I watched Putin's appeal with special feelings. Dividing the country into his own and strangers, into loyal and "undesirable" in agents, he, as if mocking, called for "protect cohesion" and "feel a reliable elbow."
My New Year holidays of 2021 were strange: while everyone went to each other at Olivier and watched Soviet comedies, I thought how much the pies, chewing gum, greeting cards and lip balm - was the first report to the Ministry of Justice. A trip to the court and to friends, a fee for reports were also recorded here - the state wants to control independent journalists by 146%. In the form that the Ministry of Justice demanded to fill, there was a lot of incomprehensible, I called the important department, asked for instructions, but there, having heard the question, they hung up the phone. I still call there periodically, in the mood - like ordinary people call their former - in response, beeps and silence.
On January 22, I was performed for 30 years, and on the eve of the lawyers reminded me: until January 27, you need to create a legal entity, because the Ministry of Justice wants so. Refuse - a thousandth fine. And instead of cheerful parties, my husband and I sat down again for the documents. I am a simple journalist, so I decided to register a non-profit organization-ANO "Journalist-foreign agent." Several lawyers checked the documents for her, the Ministry of Justice officials received a fee of 4,000 rubles (yes, not only did they oblige anyone to create an unnecessary legal entity, they also demanded money), waited for two weeks and refused to register. They did not like the charter. They didn’t return the money and demanded the same if I want to fix something there and try a second time.
I had to lay out 10 thousand rubles already and instead of ANO create a journalist-foreign agent LLC. She only submitted the documents how the “thaw” broke out: the court allowed to fulfill its humiliating instructions for the duration of the Ministry of Justice - not to label selfie and her husband and flowers with a “given message” with a “given message”, not to register a legal entity, not to report for a loaf and chicken. I exhaled and went from the tribune to interrogate the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Ministry, why I was declared an enemy of the state. I wanted to know the truth, but she turned out to be the top secret: neither me nor the lawyer gave the documents, on the basis of which they included in the list of foreign agents. “It is not supposed to, there is a“ for official use, ”the officials of the most useless on the planet of the department answered dryly. I decided to go from the other side and find out who I was working for, an agent of which country was appointed me, and again,“ this has nothing to do with the case, ”the aunts with folders were cut off, and the judge nodded respectfully.
You see, yes? Two days before the New Year, the wildest stigma with a bunch of duties, the prospect of sitting for five years for the slightest mistake in the report or the missed word in a captive registration, but do not say, for which this is all and whose supposedly you are the agent. All this mystery is needed in order to intimidate both you and others: let them guess what power you spy there and where you light the appearance. And, most importantly, it works: I come to the Seamous district of the Pskov region, and an important person (former official) tells me: "You are, pass on your Uncle Sam or who sent you there, that we ourselves will figure it out here!" I’m going to the Pskov district to understand the next problems of local residents, and there they say: “You are suspicious, we’d better talk with VGTRK!” And do not explain to these victims of propaganda that their “Russia-1” TV channel will not release the plot at best (as it happened more than once when we intersected at one “scene of the incident”), and at worst, they will put them guilty.
But they will understand this later, but for now, the state deprives me of the opportunity to work with black label. Many media refuse to cooperate ("Lyudmila, you understand, we will publish - and we can also get to the agents"). And there are also friends who, after my foreign agency, retired from my friends in social networks. They can be understood, we talked at school, at a university, and now all adults, work in serious institutions - why do they need a foreign agent "in friends", no matter what happened.
True, it “comes out” so far only with me. At the end of July, after the courts, the status entered into force and, as a respectable agent, carried 10,000 rubles of the authorized capital to the account of its journalist-foreign agent in the bank. And after 10 days, he took and blocked my card tied to the account. On Friday evening, I wrote the next report, and here - Dzyn, SMS came: "The bank had suspicions that operations on a bank card are carried out in order to launder income received by criminal means. The card was blocked to conduct expenditure operations." I immediately called the bank, politely said that through this card I in the presence of their employee conducted one single financial operation-I contributed 10 thousand rubles as a statutory capital. There was nothing more: neither a million dollars in my account, nor payments to Biden's campaign. The bank replied that it was still suspicious, I advised me to check if I got into the "lists", and significantly mentioned the law "on the opposition of legalization (laundering) of the proceeds received by criminal means and the financing of terrorism." I, ready for everything, like any journalist in Russia, opened a federal list of extremist-terrorists, but did not find my last name.
The bank did not penetrate the assurances and demanded that the journalist-foreign agent LLC Kipu documents created by order of the Ministry of Justice of LLC: “On the financial and economic activities of the enterprise, including the methods of delivery of goods to the place of trade/production, the main customers, suppliers, concluded contracts;“ On the economic sense of operations conducted on accounts ”,“ On the main counterparties and current contracts with them "," extended extracts on accounts in other banks "," current lease agreements for the office and area "," staffing "," tax reporting "," documents for transport ", etc. should I explain that any counterparties, staffing and personal transport, I, a provincial journalist, have no and no bank, does the bank require and refuse to return my account from the account from This epic lasted three months, then the score was opened, but warned: if the LLC does not do anything, we will repeat. " And what, tell me, to do this stillborn by order of the Ministry of Justice of the LLC?!
In parallel, fines flew the same LLC Journalist-foreign agent for the reporting on time to the Pension Fund, the Social Insurance Fund and the tax. I was sure that from March to July by decision of the court I could not deal with the ino -agent LLC, because the requirements were suspended. I was mistaken. It was necessary to report every month. And fines flew to me: I already laid out 9,200 rubles, but the other day receipts came for another 1000 rubles and administrative protocols, for which I would also have to pay. I do not get tired of amazing the Jesuitic orders of the Ministry of Justice, who could still climb into the wallet and completely ruin the life of an independent journalist. Every month I have to make reports on an LLC that does not do anything at all and exists only so that they do not put it. And there are huge reports to the Ministry of Justice. 30 reports were supposed to run in a year, I expected and again mistaken.
In October, a girlfriend throws a link-“The Ministry of Justice has entered the journalist-foreign agent LLC to the register of foreign agents. Are you ridiculous? Are you saying, Kafka and I haven’t dreamed? And I haven’t laughter. I hate these papers, checks, banking outputs, cash desks. I have no personal and safe life with the status This is humiliating.
They say to me: "You have a lawyer husband, you can handle it somehow." But since July 2021, the husband ceased to be "simply a lawyer and municipal deputy", but turned into "a person affiliated with a person performing the functions of a foreign agent." This is with me, with my wife he is affiliated, if that. We have a common refrigerator, a common budget and a fat cat Karl. We periodically transfer money to each other for renting apartments and products. This in modern Russia is enough to become a "member of the family of the enemy of the people." We learned about the new status of my husband when he went to the polls, wanted to become a deputy of the regional assembly, brought documents to the election room, and there is already a certificate from the police. And on each leaflet, billboard, in each newspaper the husband had to allocate 15% of the area for the inscription with a cap of caps: "A candidate affiliated with a person performing the functions of a foreign agent." Guess, is it really possible to win the elections in a small city with such a stigma? And the unicorn sat down in the chair of the regional parliament, and the husband continued to defend the detainees at rallies in courts as a representative of the OVD-Info (human rights project, also recognized as an foreigner and recently blocked by Roskomnadzor).
After one of these vessels, an employee of the E -E Center approached him and suggested “talking”. The husband wrote about this in social networks. The answer flew quickly: strangers (possibly somehow connected with the center of "e") began to threaten her husband with a prison from several accounts. Then one ex-police called Telegram and warned "friendship" that in our rented apartment there may be a "authorized wiretapping".
My husband and I, of course, do not believe people in uniform for a word, but now, when we say that “we need to buy a cat to buy grass”, just in case, we will certainly jerk off and follow, articulating each letter, say: “Comrade Major, this is not what you thought: grass is ordinary, freshly intermittent wheat, she needs a cat for drugs.” It sounds strange, but what to do?
I write this text under the Christmas tree and I think that during the New Year holidays you need to write more than one report to the Ministry of Justice, but, apparently, 14: the Jesuit department recently changed its favorite form of the OIA001, and instead of one there were 007. And I am a foreign agent with its LLC Journalist-Line Agent, so we multiply everything by two. For the LLC, by the way, you also need to order an audit and, they say, this thing costs 100,000 rubles. Against this background, I listen to the next line of Putin’s line: answers the question of foreign agents and talks about the collapse of Russia from the inside.
With coming.
Lyudmila Savitskaya - correspondent of the Russian Radio Liberty Service ( Sever. Real ) in the Pskov region
Opinions expressed under the heading of "blogs" may not reflect the point of view of the Radio Liberty editorial office